Kākā spread their wings, trade sanctuary for urban living

Otago Daily Times

09-06-2025

A kākā makes itself at home in a Dunedin garden, near the Kensington Oval yesterday. PHOTO: SUPPLIED
Telling people you have seen a flying pig is probably not a good idea.
But if you have seen an endangered kākā flying around the Dunedin CBD lately, you are not going crazy.
A Dunedin resident living near the Kensington Oval said she got a hell of a fright a couple of days ago when the native parrot flew into her lounge window.
"It was spread-eagled against the window.
"And the dog went crazy.
"Then it flew into the tree and sat there for a while, like right outside our window.
"It was amazing. And then it flew away."
She said it returned again yesterday.
"It was sitting in the apple tree, just having a big munch on a Granny Smith. It loved it.
"It didn't seem to be bothered that we were there."
It had also been eating wild banana passionfruit from a vine in the area.
She had since notified the Department of Conservation and the Orokonui Ecosanctuary of the sighting, and the ecosanctuary had advised her not to feed it, or even give it sugar water.
"They said if we gave it sugar water, we were in danger of giving it a bacterial infection, and we should just leave it be."
Kākā are skilled at finding food in spaces that are healthy for them, but they are curious and can be harmed by encounters with foreign foods, objects and predatory species.
Ecosanctuary staff urged Dunedin residents to support the parrots by not offering food or sugar water; avoiding socialising with them; keeping pets inside; engaging in habitat regeneration of native plants; and improving predator control such as traps for rats, stoats, ferrets and weasels.
Ecosanctuary operations manager Elton Smith said her report was one of many about kākā flying around the greater Dunedin area in recent weeks.
"We have been aware of at least one kākā flying around in the city for the past three weeks or so.
"There's also been kākā seen in Mosgiel, Warrington, Waitati — those sort of areas."
The kākā was "guaranteed" to be from the Orokonui Ecosanctuary.
They could fly up to 20km in a day, and he believed it was part of a natural dispersal, where the birds left the ecosanctuary to find their own space.
"At Orokonui, we're probably reaching our capacity in terms of kākā," Mr Smith said.
"So the ones we do have are now establishing themselves outside the sanctuary — they're getting around, looking for new territory.
"There's only so many kākā we can have inside, and in order to have a large, robust kākā population, they do need to establish outside the sanctuary.
"There are more and more observations from the general public that would suggest that's what's happening.
"And there's been good evidence to show that they have been breeding on the outside, too."
Mr Smith was delighted to see they were surviving on their own, outside the boundaries of the ecosanctuary.
"It is really good news. It's a sign that the population is increasing."
He believed they would become a much more frequent sight around the Dunedin area in coming years, as the outside population grew.
"It should be like what's happened in Wellington.
"They started off in a sanctuary, and now they're very common, all throughout Wellington and beyond."
[e-mail]